


How To Save A Life

by Kemmasandi



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Ficlet, Other, sorta - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-05
Updated: 2018-12-05
Packaged: 2019-09-12 10:20:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16871143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kemmasandi/pseuds/Kemmasandi
Summary: In which Ratchet gets a scare.





	How To Save A Life

 

The priests hadn’t wanted Ratchet to keep his medical upgrades. The Prime systems were so comprehensive and robust, they said, that Ratchet would no longer need them, and besides, who knew what glitches the two rival functions together would cause him?

Ratchet had insisted, however. And while the additional mass of systems had made him physically somewhat unshapely and lumbering, they seemed to get along with his medical programming just fine.

So when his Lord Protector shoved him aside at a public festival ritual and took the sniper’s round that had been meant for Ratchet’s spark, he dropped to his knees without a second thought and once more fulfilled his function. It had been a long time since he had done medical work at all, but the knowledge and skill was still there in the back of his mind, and it all came flooding back as he flipped out his old medical scalpels and cut the already-rusting edges of the wound away. Cosmic rust in the bullet—a known assassin’s tool.

It wasn’t until later that the medical protocols faded, leaving Ratchet with the intimate knowledge of what the day had nearly cost him.

He lay on the shared berth in the Primal suite, next to his grievously injured Lord Protector. Optimus’ internals hummed away, stable and strong despite everything he’d gone through. The room was dark, the vistas of Iacon glowing through the shatterproof windows. 

Ratchet turned onto his side, reaching out. He wrapped one arm around Optimus’, holding tight. Optimus’ warmth was comforting.  

“Don’t scare me like that,” he murmured, pressing his face into Optimus’ smoothly armoured shoulder. “There’s only so much devotion I can take.”

But Optimus would live another day. That alone was reason to be glad.

He drifted into recharge, lulled by the rhythmic hum of their systems. And in the morning, he woke to his bondmate’s smile.


End file.
